


Gonna Take Me That South-Bound

by meeks00



Series: South-Bound series [1]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-21
Updated: 2010-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-28 20:05:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meeks00/pseuds/meeks00
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Walt is the first to open fire, he knows the moment he pulls the trigger that there’s been some sort of disconnect between his brain and the rest of him. That’s where it starts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gonna Take Me That South-Bound

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the Marshall Tucker Band’s “Can’t You See.”

When Walt is the first to open fire, he knows the moment he pulls the trigger that there’s been some sort of disconnect between his brain and the rest of him.

That’s where it starts.

He remembers seeing the car come around the corner, then the blue smoke from Brad’s grenade. He remembers seeing shoulders and hands tense out of the corner of his eye as everyone locked on-site, distinctly remembers the weight of his weapon with his finger straight on the trigger, but after that. Well.

He knows he’s tired. Too tired to sleep. Too tired to complain. Too tired to do anything but what muscle memory dictates. He services his weapon, lubes down the Mark-19, taps out a beat with his knee against the driver’s seat as Ray sings some off-key version of a cheesy pop song. Keeps going through the motions because his body doesn’t know anything else anymore.

So when they’re set up at that roadblock and he’s the first to open fire, and when his ears echo with the silence after a squeal of tires and distant voices and running footsteps, he realizes that there must’ve been some sort of disconnect.

Afterward, there is a man with a bullet through one eye in his scope sight, his finger is still curled around the trigger, and he wouldn’t be able to describe what the fuck just happened if someone was pressing a barrel into his temple.

“Fuck, Walt! You didn't even fire a warning shot! That was a wounding shot, motherfucker!”

Walt doesn’t register Brad’s raised voice until the team leader’s in his face — Iceman exterior melting off in the heat of the moment, then just as quickly chilling up again when Walt stares back with nothing to say, no excuse, nothing going through his head except the image of that car speeding toward them until it isn’t going anywhere anymore.

“You OK?” Brad asks. An apology for an out-of-character explosion against a friendly — maybe. A mental health check — probably.

“The car kept coming,” Walt replies.

He’s not sure why he says it. They’re all Recon Marines, trained to observe above all else, but he keeps seeing that car round the corner, the blue of Brad’s smoke grenade, keeps hearing the echo of his lonely bursts of fire. The scene replays in his mind on repeat until, every time, the car finally stops coming.

He feels a hand rest on his shoulder, a slight pressure there, and then somehow he’s at the humvee and being nudged into Reporter’s spot in the back seat. He hears Ray shift up front, feels the extra weight of the man’s eyes on the back of his head, isn’t sure what to make of it when the RTO doesn’t say a word. Can’t decide if that just makes everything worse.

“We’re just doing our jobs,” Brad says, ducking his head down to look at Walt carefully.

Walt glances at him, knows it’s fucked up backwards and sideways when the only thing he can think right at that moment is that he just wishes he could go lie down somewhere and finally get some sleep.

 

__

 

When Walt sits down to write his report, he knows that the LT and Gunny Wynn have his back, that he can excuse it all away as doing his job. The men take it less as his being trigger happy like Trombley with the camels and those shepherd kids and more as him being so sleep deprived that he went through some sort of ballistic meltdown.

He doesn’t know himself what the fuck it was, how to describe it even now, so he doesn’t try to explain or apologize. He just tries to write his report.

His pen scratches against the notepad, mimics the sound after it all went down as Reporter recorded every detail so it wouldn’t ever escape anyone, but all that comes out when Walt tries to re-play it on paper are words that don’t really describe anything about what happened, that don’t seem to be enough to excuse anything.

 _A white sedan. Three possible hostiles. Incoming._

In high school, he remembers having to stay after class one day with Mrs. Martz to discuss his English papers. The thoughts were all there — tons of them, she’d said with a laugh — but they’d come across better if they followed a certain structure. To do that, she said he could try writing it all down first, to take it all in, and then group all of the connecting bits together again so they would make an understandable whole.

Walt tries to relax his grip on his pen. Tries to find words. Wants to make this understandable in his report so the LT and Gunny don’t need to excuse anything away for him. Besides, he’d like to understand what the hell happened too.

 _Finger straight on the trigger. Car still incoming. Two bursts fired._

He hears someone rummaging around in the back of the humvee nearby, glances over his shoulder and sees Ray surface with an MRE pack.

“Milkshake?” Ray asks, holding up the brown packet with a shit-eating grin. “You can have strawberry. It’s filled with so many fuckin’ artificial ingredients and sugar that it’ll make you shit cholera and love out your ass tomorrow.”

Walt forces himself to look away, turns back to his pad and paper. He hears Ray sigh, rip open the MRE, slurp. Sometimes it’s hard to think when Ray makes so much noise. When he’s around at all.

Usually all they have is thinking time as they drive hundreds of miles from one town to the next. Walt thinks most of that time is better spent listening to the bullshit the RTO spouts off about — if not only because of the entertainment value, then also because letting the thrum of the convoy of humvees act as the only backdrop to his own thoughts can’t be a good thing.

“Fine,” Ray says. There is only a brief moment of silence as Walt touches his pen back to the paper before Ray says next, “You know what this shit reminds me of?”

Walt isn’t sure if the man actually talks to people or just at them — if he’s perpetually on some sort of soapbox, monologuing to the world at large. He wonders what kind of tone Ray would take on if Reporter wasn’t around to transcribe every word spewed out of his mouth like it’s all heavenly word-vomit that his _Rolling Stone_ readers will devour.

“It reminds me of those fuckin’ cartoon animals from the commercials for that drinkable yogurt stuff,” Ray goes on. “That gross yogurt smoothie shit, remember? The animals are all dancing and on crack. And isn’t that exactly what every parent wants? Their progeny to be high as fuck on sugar when they get home from work. I bet you all the parents probably shelled out some major cash for that shit too.”

Walt licks his lips and tries to tune Ray out.

 _Vehicle disabled. Two men running. A man with a bullet through one eye._

He stares at that one for a while. Tune-out complete.

And then: “Hey, Walt.”

Walt feels something nudge the back of his head.

“Feel the love, Walt baby.”

There’s that nudging again. He swats behind him, sees Ray come around with a milkshake dirty mouth, feels a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly feels a pang of hunger low in his belly, comfort start to spread from the pressure of that hand.

He pushes both feelings away. Pushes Ray off again. He needs to focus on his report.

“Leave me the fuck alone,” he says, and he tries not to look at Ray’s mouth.

He needs to figure out what the hell he was thinking.

“Finally, he speaks,” Ray replies, voice dipping down into something a little grimmer than his normal bantering tone. He takes a seat adjacent to where Walt sits, focuses on his milkshake, is quiet for a moment.

Walt almost apologizes.

Instead he shakes his head and stares at his chicken scratch writing. He can’t seem to organize these thoughts any better than how they are as one- to two-word sentences, mere impressions and images.

He keeps staring at them as if they’ll make sense, but they don’t. There doesn’t seem to be any logical progression that he can see other than what his outline shows:

 _A) car approaches, B) two bursts fired, C) man with a bullet through one eye._

For all that he stares down at the words, there doesn’t seem to be anything that he can remember about how each of those steps connects. There doesn’t appear to be any sort of logical progression of reason or a thought process that he can come up with for how A connects to B connects to C.

He feels someone come up on his nine.

“Walt.”

It’s the LT. Walt resists the urge to cover up his notes as the man glances down at the pad of paper. It’s almost as if he’s trying to cover up the facts until he can figure out a way to explain the reason behind it all. Isn’t sure that even exists.

“Finish your report and get it to me ASAP. You did nothing wrong, but we’re going to see if there’s a better way to stop these cars.”

Walt thinks morbidly that he found a way to do that pretty effectively himself. Hates himself a little bit for thinking it right after.

“Walt’s got a great way, LT,” Ray cuts in. “Shoot the driver, stop the car.”

Hearing his trail of thoughts voiced out loud by someone else makes it sound worse than in his head. And he also worries at the thought that his own mind is following a trajectory similar to that of one Ray Person.

Walt shoots a look at Ray, takes in that dirty mouth, the shrug-it-off-your-back-already smile. He isn’t sure what expression is on his face, but after a moment Ray looks away and his smile slides away.

Walt changes his grasp on his pen, hears the LT get up, sees Brad follow him away. He doesn’t look at anyone after that.

“Hey, Walt.”

Walt steadfastly ignores Ray, scratches three lines under the word “two bursts fired” on his paper to try to get back on track. For the life of him, he still can’t figure out why his automatic reaction was to fire.

He can feel Ray’s eyes on him, imagines the pink milkshake dripping down the man’s chin, wonders absently what that milkshake would taste like mixed with days of sweat if he licked it off. He thinks next that he’s probably really fucked up for thinking that — that maybe this is what going through PTSD feels like.

“I’m just fuckin’ with you,” Ray says.

Walt ignores him because that’s easy. He can’t really handle a smile or that fuckin’ child-like glee from a mere goddamn strawberry MRE milkshake. Can’t take it because he doesn’t think he can respond in any way that’ll give back as much as he fucking gets from these guys.

 _What the fuck happened?_

Walt stares for a moment before lifting his pen from where it bleeds on the dot of his question mark.

“Hey, fuck it, Walt.” Walt lifts his head from the pad, glances over at Espera. “These Hajji motherfuckers are trying to kill us. I’m for lighting up every motherfucker that comes within one hundred meters.”

He takes in Espera’s patented “fuck it” expression. He wonders what he’d look like if he tried it on. Comes to the conclusion that he’s maybe just not built for it.

Walt grew up in Taylorstown, Va., in a renovated barn house that was built in 1912. He lived in a small town where common crimes committed were more along the lines of ding dong ditch than anything to with drugs and guns. He tries to imagine how he’d answer if someone asked him if he killed people.

So he sits there and tries to translate that life into the outcome of this one — why the result is his being the triggerman with a body to account for.

 _I fucked up,_ he writes on the bottom of the page. Draws sharp lines like scars like thrashes beneath the three words.

He rips out the piece of paper, crumples it between his fists, stares at it.

“More like _Trombley?_ ” Ray yells, and Walt snaps out of his thoughts, looking up in time to see Brad grin in Ray’s face.

Suddenly everyone’s chanting “Whopper Jr., Whopper Jr,” and Walt feels like he’s going to be sick when he glances at Trombley and sees a slight grin.

He pushes himself up, looks at the crumpled piece of paper clenched in a fist, tosses it into an empty ranger grave. Knows that burying it won’t get rid of it. Putting something in the ground doesn’t mean it never existed in the first place.

“Walt,” Brad calls.

He glances back, sees Brad’s eyes slide toward the weapon Walt left behind. When Brad doesn’t say anything more, Walt turns and walks away, doesn’t even want to feel the cold metal in his palm, to feel the echo of the sound of lonely bursts of fire in his fingertips. Doesn’t want to remember the moment he realized it was his own finger that was curled around the trigger.

He walks down the line of humvees for some air, is suddenly bent over and sick a few feet away from Lovell’s victor, ignores it when Doc Bryan slaps him on the shoulder as he walks back down the line again.

When Walt finally sets down the notepad and his pen back in the humvee later that day, he knows the moment his report is done that there’s something missing, and he isn’t sure if he’ll find it. He wonders if this is how it ends.

 

__

 

Later, Brad pulls out a bag from the back of the humvee with a childlike grin that lifts up everybody’s spirits. The grins on everyone else’s faces may also be due to the cans of Chef Boyardee and a clean issue of _Juggs._

Walt watches him draw out the can with the gracious motions of someone finally bringing to light an ancient religious relic, sees Ray’s face light up and thinks the guy’s about to jizz in his pants from excitement.

He drops his pot, catches the can Brad tosses to him, starts to eat it cold. It doesn’t taste like much, but he downs it rhythmically anyway because Brad’s already watching each move he makes with a mother hen quality that kind of makes him uncomfortable.

Lilley and Espera wander up, and despite Espera’s original reservations about taking hand-outs from white people, he takes a can too.

“Hey, Whopper Jr., you got any Tabasco to go with this?” Garza asks.

Walt feels his stomach turn at that. Doesn’t know why that nickname stuck — who the fuck came up with it in the first place.

“OK, there it is,” Reporter says, looking up and scanning everyone’s faces. “You did just call him Whopper Jr. Now what the hell is that about?”

“We call our man Whopper Jr. because they're sold at Burger King,” Lilley answers. At Reporter’s confused expression, he goes on, “Burger King.”

“Right…” Reporter says, and Walt has a sudden urge to throw the remains of his beefaroni at him. Thinks maybe the elaboration is necessary for a quote, or maybe he’s just so sheltered that he has no clue about how Marines’ minds track on a killology pathway toward everything morbid.

“B.K. Baby killer. Trombley's our little Whopper Jr. ever since he shot those shepherds.”

Walt’s spoon floats above the head of his can. He thinks suddenly that he’s not ever going to be able to eat at that restaurant again after this is all over.

“Damn, Brad,” Ray says suddenly, voice unusually loud all of a sudden. “What else you got hidden in the Humvee? A fat chick?”

Walt doesn’t look up at him, but he starts eating again at that, something light filling in his chest at the inanity that constantly spews from that man’s mouth.

“Shoot some civilians, you get a reputation. Right?” Espera says, voice grave.

Walt pretends he isn’t listening, but he’s taking in every word, and he feels like he might be sick.

“Walt. Walt,” Ray says, his voice traced with urgency, and Walt glances up. “He didn’t mean that.”

Walt stares, takes in that full mouth, ravioli sauce all over his chin and some even on his fuckin’ cheek, and suddenly he can’t help but laugh.

The laugh seems to confuse Ray, because he says, “Walt.”

And Walt shakes his head because sometimes Ray is just too much and doesn’t even seem to know it. “You’re a fuckin’ messed up hick,” Walt says, grinning back at him. “You can’t even eat ravioli.”

Ray looks confused, but there’s a smile around his eyes as he says, still with a full mouth, “I eat ravioli.”

Walt hears everyone else’s laughs twine around the surprising sound of his own. Digs into his beefaroni again. It tastes delicious.

 

__

 

Afterward, Walt heads over to the water cans to clean off his spoon. Ray meets him there to wash off his hands and face. At the man’s bright grin, Walt can’t help it when he rolls his eyes and laughs.

“You’re like a fuckin’ giant, vulgar baby,” he says.

“At least I’m your giant, vulgar baby,” Ray replies, raising his eyebrows up and down.

“Right,” Walt says, wiping the spoon on the inside of his sleeve.

He turns to walk away, but then Ray says, “Hey.” Ray scrubs his hands on his pants and swipes his forearm across his mouth before reaching into his pocket and unfolding a crumpled up piece of paper.

Walt immediately recognizes his own handwriting with a clench in his gut. “Where the fuck did you get that?” he asks, reaching for it.

Ray leans quickly away and holds it out of reach with a faint grin. “I found it. Finders keepers.”

Eying him warily, Walt says, “You’re a retard.”

Sometimes he really just doesn’t understand what the fuck goes on in Ray’s head, if maybe he grew up thinking crack was sugar by mistake.

“I love you too, Walt baby,” Ray replies. “I’ll write a song for my band about the man with a bullet through one eye. I’ll dedicate my combat jacks to thoughts of your five-year-old handwriting.”

“Fuck you,” Walt says, shoving him. He turns and walks away as Ray flails and falls flat on his ass.

He hears Ray’s laugh at his back before the man says, “Hey, look, wait a second. I’m just fuckin’ with you.” There’s a scuffling sound as Ray gets up and jogs to catch up. Then Walt feels a hand wrap around his arm, tugging him back. “Hold up a second.”

“What do you want?”

Ray isn’t laughing anymore, but his smile is still there. It kind of makes Walt want to punch him in the face because he doesn’t want to feel better about any of this, because the sight of that grin makes the memory of how he fucked up a little less harsh. And it shouldn't be.

“Look, you didn’t fuck up, you sheltered little hillbilly.”

Walt glances at him, takes in the earnest expression, the red stain of ravioli at the corner of the man’s lip. “I didn’t say I did,” he replies defensively.

Ray shoves the piece of paper in Walt’s face before pulling it away again and pointing at last line on the piece of paper. “You wrote it right here. You _underlined_ it, homes! Three times.”

“Fuck you.”

“Hey, I’m not hatin’ on your handwriting or anything here, you sensitive pussy. I’m just sayin’ — you didn’t fuck up.”

He sighs when Walt just stares at the words on the lined paper and pulls it away. Walt looks past the tall grass to where the humvees peek just over the razor sharp tips.

“Look, for all we know, they might’ve suicide-bombed all our asses. They could’ve just been idiots without my mad driving skills, and they might’ve driven through the roadblock and put a dent in our humvee. And then Brad would’ve cried or what-the-fuck-ever. Think about it any way you want. Hey.”

Walt feels calloused fingers grasp onto his jaw line, turn his face, and he’s staring at Ray’s face — the raised eyebrows, that ravioli stain at the corner of his lip, that smile growing again.

“Not to diss Brad’s love for smiley-faced smoke grenades, but none of us are keeping our fingers straight on the trigger when motherfuckin’ Hajji cars approach the roadblock, OK? You were the first to fire, so what? You heard Espera — he would’ve lit it the fuck up a second later if you hadn’t. Now how about you chill the fuck out?”

Walt’s shaking his head when he sees Ray take a few steps forward.

He sees the grin form on Ray’s face, watches it grow from the eyes and spread down to upwardly curling lips.

He doesn’t ever see this one in full because he feels then that it’s his own turn to move forward.

Feels the soft press of a calloused hand against the nape of his neck drawing him closer, feels a hint of a smile tingle in his chest before it makes its way up to his face, then it’s all warm lips and the light flick of a tongue.

He feels Ray’s laugh on the man’s lips before he even hears the sound.

Suddenly remembers what it’s like to know how things fit together again.

When Walt first kisses Ray, he knows the moment that their lips touch that there’s been some sort of connect between everything horrible that’s happened here and everything good that’s going to happen next.

This is just where it starts.

 

**


End file.
